Conventionally, most computational tasks are performed upon a client or a server within a proprietary intranet. For example, a software application resident upon a client can be utilized by the client to effectuate operations such as creating data, obtaining data, manipulating data and/or storing data in memory associated with the client. Further, corporate entities and universities oftentimes employ one or more servers to perform tasks such as data storage/retrieval, data warehousing/analysis, electronic mail and/or backup. These clients and/or servers within the proprietary intranet can include software applications that provide functionality such as network browsing, word processing, electronic mail management, and so forth.
In typical client-server architectures, hardware resources of clients and servers on proprietary intranets are utilized to effectuate the aforementioned computationally intensive tasks. However, client and server hardware resources can be expensive, difficult and time consuming to install, update, troubleshoot and maintain. According to an illustration, upgrading server hardware of corporate entities can lead to lengthy downtimes during which electronic mail communications are halted, employees are unable to access data retained on the servers, customers are unable to view content or effectuate online commercial transactions with the corporate entities, and the like; thus, in addition to costs associated with purchasing the hardware, the corporate entity is faced with lost profits, customer frustration, diminished employee productivity, and so forth.
Moreover, conventional client devices can be constrained by limited storage, processing power, security, bandwidth, redundancy, graphical display rendering capabilities, etc. Upgrading hardware resources associated with client devices can be effectuated by purchasing replacement client devices or components of the client devices that can be installed such as central processing units (CPUs), random access memory (RAM), hard disks, video display controllers, and the like; however, upgraded client devices can still be constrained by the above-noted limitations. For example, typical cellular telephones or personal digital assistants (PDAs) may be unable to store large libraries of video files in memory of such devices. Thus, desired computational tasks can be omitted due to limitations of hardware resources.